Janhvi Kapoor has often spoken about the downside of being a public figure and having free access to social media. While today she frequently comes across deepfake images of herself online, she first experienced something similar at the age of 15. During her school days, she saw a morphed image of herself on porn sites. At the time, she tried to rationalise it as a risk of being online. However, even today, AI-generated images of her continue to deeply affect her.
Janhvi Kapoor on finding her photo on porn sites
Janhvi Kapoor recalled seeing her first such image at the age of 15 during a conversation with Raj Shamani. She said, “I don’t know if it was a deepfake, but it was something like that. I saw a picture of me on a porn site.”
The Mili actress shared that she was in her IT class when she came across the images. “We had IT class in school, and boys used to go on those sites for fun. My pictures were on there. And this was in school, so that was a weird experience,” she said.
Further speaking about how she reacted, Janhvi said, “At some point, I was like, this is the cost you have to pay. There is no morality in a lot of these things on social media.” However, over time, she found it harder to rationalise, and such images now affect her deeply.
“I am not at peace with it. There are visuals of me out there, even shared by official news pages, which are completely AI-generated. I have never worn those clothes or been photographed like that,” she added.
On how deepfake affects her job
Janhvi also explained how these images impact her professional choices. “It gets circulated as if it’s something I’ve put out. That creates a certain kind of impression. If tomorrow I tell a director I’m not comfortable wearing something, someone can pull up those pictures and say, ‘But you’ve done this before.’ Even if they don’t say it, it makes you think,” she said.
She further shared that while it upsets her, she feels she doesn’t have the space to raise her voice, as it is often perceived as a “privileged people problem.” “It upsets me, of course. But I feel like I don’t have that much of a voice to complain,” she said, adding that perceptions of privilege make it harder to speak out.
“There’s this attitude, you’ve got so much in life, thoda seh lo, don’t complain. So I don’t think my voice has that credibility yet. There will be backlash, and it might take away from the cause,” she concluded.
